Monitoring of the heart's mechanical and electrical dynamics and its immediate periphery is essential to fully characterise and understand its functionality and variations. The monitoring and early detection of any abnormalities or variations in the cardiac cycle functionality are very critical and have significant impact on the prevention of disease and associated complications. Heartbeat rate and blood pressure are two heart parameters that are fundamental for the prediction of any heart abnormalities.
Attention so far has been focused on assessing the biophysical properties of the heart's components using conventional measurement approaches such as the ECG, blood pressure and heartbeat meters to obtain measurements for such parameters. These traditional techniques are time consuming because of the need for installing multiple probes on the subject to obtain reliable measurements. They also require expensive, bulky and not easily accessible equipment. Furthermore, such equipment allow for the monitoring of the cardiac parameters only when the subject is in proximity to the dedicated equipment.
There is a desire in the field for continuous and real-time monitoring capabilities and the development of techniques to measure a wide range of cardiac cycle parameters effectively, using easily accessible contactless probing systems.